Multi-beam ion mobility time-of-flight mass spectrometry with multi-channel data recording

ABSTRACT

The content of the invention comprises a concept of multi-beam ion pre-selection from a single sample, coordinated mobility (against the gas flow) separation, cooling ions in supersonic gas flow and mass separation of thus low divergent ions by single or plural compact high-resolution orthogonal time-of-flight mass spectrometers both linear or reflectron type with controlled collision-induced dissociation (CID) and multi-channel data recording for the optimization of sample use in the analysis, and obtaining as much useful information about the sample as possible in a reasonably short time.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority to U.S. provisional application serialNo. 60/685,247, filed on May 27, 2005.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates generally to instrumentation andmethodology for characterization of chemical samples based on ionmobility spectrometry (IMS) and mass spectrometry (MS). Specifically,the invention relates to improved IMS, using the concepts of multi-beamion pre-selection from a single sample, independent yet coordinatedseparation of each ion beam by both ion mobility and by single ormultiple time-of-flight mass spectrometers (TOFMS) (independently fordifferent beams) each with controllable fragmentation of ion mobilityseparated ions, and multi-channel data recording in one or a few TOFMS.Specifically, the improvements include simultaneously producing andextracting positive and negative ions from the sample (including theaccumulation and post-ionization of neutral species), trapping ions inmultiple traps, improved transportation of ions against drift gas flow,a new design of mobility cell/TOFMS interface comprising well collimatedsupersonic cooled gas flows and an original multi-channel RF-ion guide.Additionally, the technique of multi-beam data recording providesmethods for increasing the dynamic range of the measurements and forobtaining additional shape analysis beyond that available from ionmobility alone. These improvements may be used to increase throughputfrom a sample to downstream instruments and methods. The resultinginstruments and methods are useful for qualitative and/or quantitativechemical and biological analysis.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

An ion mobility spectrometer typically comprises an ionization source, adrift cell, and an ion detector. Examples of an ion detector include asampling plate, an electron multiplier, or a mass spectrometer. Ionmobility spectrometry separates ions in terms of their mobility in adrift/buffer gas by measuring the ion equilibrium drift velocity. Whengaseous ions in the presence of the drift gas experience a constantelectric field, they accelerate until the occurrence of a collision witha neutral atom or molecule within the drift gas. This acceleration andcollision sequence is repeated continuously. Over time, this microscopicscenario averages the instantaneous velocities over the macroscopicdimensions of the drift tube resulting in the measurement of a constantion velocity based upon ion size, charge and drift gas pressure. Theratio of the ion velocity to the magnitude of the electric field isdefined as ion mobility. In other words, the ion drift velocity (v_(d))is proportional to the electric field strength (E), where the ionmobility K=_(v) _(d)/E is a function of ion volume/charge ratio. ThusIMS is a separation technique similar to mass spectrometry. IMS isgenerally known to have high sensitivity with moderate resolving power.Separation efficiency is compromised when “bands” of ions spread apartas opposed to arriving together at the end of the IM drift tube in atight, well-defined spatial region.

The resolving power for a uniform or quasi-uniform ion mobility electricfield increases as a square root of voltage applied along mobility cell.It would seem that there is not much freedom to increase the resolution.However, the situation may be improved if the ion drift in a gas flow isconsidered. Ions move against the gas flow only if the field is strongerthan a certain value specific for the mobility of the ions. Ions withlower mobility may be stationary or even move in the negative direction(with the gas flow). Therefore, better ion separation can be expectedwhere the time of this separation can be chosen suitable for specificapplications and compatible with the time diagram of the ion detectoroperation. The problem is how to efficiently organize ion mobilityseparation using gas counter-flow. Most often an ion mobility separationis used with ion sources working under elevated pressure and the sourcepressure is often used when these ions are introduced into a mobilitycell. There may be no gas counter-flow in such an application. On theother hand, drift gas counter-flow is inevitable when IMS is used foranalysis of ions created in high vacuum ion sources such as a secondaryion source where secondary ions are created from a surface maintained inhigh vacuum and must then be moved against a counter-flow of gas intothe ion mobility spectrometer. The main problem then is how to overcomethe strong counter-flow and preserve ion throughput. It is quite naturalto use a time varying electric field to gradually move ions from apulsed ion formation region against the gas flow and into the IMS. Smallions need a relatively small field to overcome the gas flow withoutdecomposing whereas larger ions can come to the entrance orifice laterunder the action of a stronger field. At the time of application of thelarger field necessary to move the heavier ions, small ions are alreadyinside the mobility cell and are not subjected to the strong field whichwould otherwise cause their fragmentation. Some separation of ions inaddition to the usual mobility separation is achieved in this case,however, it is often rather small, because of the diffusion broadeningduring the initial ion cloud formation. The gas counter-flow itself isalso useful because it prevents neutral species from getting into themobility cell and degrading its performance by forming non-conductivedeposits on the mobility cell electrodes. One of the crucial points forthe present invention is the organization of the weaker counter-flow forthe low pressure ion sources and purposeful creation of the counter-flowfor high pressure ion sources for their interfacing with ion mobilitycells.

The combination of an ion mobility spectrometer (IMS) with a massspectrometer (MS) is well known in the art. In 1961, Barnes et al. wereamong the first to combine these two separation methods. Suchinstruments allow for separation and analysis of ions according to boththeir mobility and mass, which is often referred to as two-dimensionalseparation or two-dimensional analysis. Young et al. realized that anorthogonal time-of-flight mass spectrometer (oTOFMS) is the mostpreferred mass spectrometer type to be used in such combination becauseof its ability to detect simultaneously and very rapidly (e.g. with highscan rate) all masses emerging from the mobility spectrometer. Thecombination of a mobility spectrometer with an oTOFMS is referred to asan Ion Mobility-oTOFMS. This prior art instrument comprised means forion generation, a mobility drift cell, an oTOFMS, and a small orificefor ion transmission from the mobility cell to the oTOFMS.

In 2003, Loboda (U.S. Pat. No. 6,630,662) described a method forimproving ion mobility separation by balancing ion drift motionsprovided by the influence of DC electric field and counter-flow of thegas. Using this balance, ions are at first accumulated inside an ionguide, preferably an RF-ion guide, and then, by changing the electricfield or gas flow, the ions are gradually eluted from the ion guide tothe mass spectrometer. Such type of ion accumulation is restricted tocollecting relatively small number of ions due to space-charge effect.It also has some limitation in ion mass-to-charge (m/z) range becauseRF-focusing for a given RF-voltage has decreasing efficiency for largermass ions. Increasing RF-voltage in this case is limited due to thepossibility of glow discharge at high voltages. For at least thesereasons, this method has significant resolving power limitations,particularly for large mass ions. The time of ion accumulation and theirstorage in RF-ion guide should not be too long, otherwise ions would bepartially lost due to diffusion into rods or walls confining the gasflow. The instrumental improvements disclosed below eliminate thesedrawbacks.

Use of MS as a detector enables separation based on mass-to-charge (m/z)ratio after the separation based on ion mobility. Shoff and Hardenpioneered the use of Mobility-MS in a mode similar to tandem massspectrometry (MS/MS). In this mode, the mobility spectrometer is used toisolate a parent ion and the mass spectrometer is used for the analysisof fragment ions (also called daughter ions), which are produced byfragmentation of parent ions. Below this specific technique of operatinga Mobility-MS is referred to as Mobility/MS, or as Mobility-TOF if themass spectrometer is a TOFMS-type instrument. Other prior artinstruments and methods using sequential IMS/MS analysis have beendescribed (see, e.g., McKight, et al. Phys. Rev., 1967, 164, 62; Young,et al., J. Chem. Phys., 1970, 53, 4295; U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,905,258 and6,323,482 of Clemmer et al.; PCT WO 00/08456 of Guevremont) but nonecombine the instrumental improvements disclosed here. When coupled withsoft ionization techniques and the sensitivity improvements obtainedthrough the use of the drift cell systems disclosed herein, the IMS/MSsystems and corresponding analytical methods of the present inventionoffer significant analytical advantages over the prior art, particularlyfor the analysis of macromolecular species, such as biomolecules.

One challenge when building a Mobility-MS system is to achieve high iontransmission from the mobility region into the MS region. It is at thisinterface that earlier uses of linear fields appear incongruous with thegoal of maximizing ion throughput across the IMS/MS interface. Themobility section operates at typical pressures between 1 mTorr and 1000Torr whereas the MS typically operates at pressures below 10⁻⁴ Torr. Inorder to maintain this difference in pressure it is necessary torestrict the cross-section of the exit orifice of the IM drift cell sothat the region between the IM and the MS can be differentially pumped.Typically this orifice cross section is well below 1 mm². Hence it isdesirable to focus the ions into a narrow beam before they reach theinterface. Another important property of ion beam coming into MS is thebeam divergence, or the kinetic energy of ion motion in the planeorthogonal to the direction of their travel. This is the main factorresponsible for the quality of mass spectra obtained in the orthogonalTOFMS. It is a subject of the present invention to achieve good ion beamproperties by using a thin dielectric coating of the electrodes followedby controlled charging of this coating. It allows the use of a channelinstead of an exit orifice with sharp edges for the IM drift cell and toform low divergent supersonic gas flow where ions could be significantlycooled to have an average energy of their side motion corresponding to afew ° K.

In 1997, Brittain, et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,633,497) described thecoating of the interior surfaces of an ion trap or ionization chamberwith an inert inorganic non-metallic insulator or semiconductor materialfor the passivation of the surfaces in order to minimize absorption,degradation or decomposition of a sample in contact with the surface

U.S. Pat. No. 6,600,155 to Andrien et al., teaches the coating of asurface in time-of-flight pulsing region with a dielectric film (amongother types of films) for improving ion beam properties beforeorthogonal extraction of ions into the drift region of a time-of-flightmass spectrometer

Whitehouse (U.S. Pat. No. 6,707,037) proposed the extraction of ions ofboth signs from a MALDI target directly located inside gas-filledRF-multi-pole ion guide, to concentrate them along the axis of theguide, and send them in opposite directions under the influence of anaxial electric field for subsequent mass analysis.

Park (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 2004/0149902 A1) proposed the useof a multi-pole RF-ion guide to insert ions from a number of ion sourcesinto analytical devices including mass spectrometers and mobilityspectrometers. In 2002 Moini and Jiang in U.S. Pat. No. 6,465,776described the insertion of ions from multiple electrospray capillariesthrough one quadrupole RF-ion guide where ion beams are mixed intoTOFMS. However, multi-channel data recording was not disclosed.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,763,865 to Kaersdorf et al. disclosed a method andapparatus for quantitative non-resonant photoionization of neutrals. Atime-of-flight mass spectrometer with novel ion mirror for separation ofdifferent ion beams is described. Eriksson, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,683,302described an electrospray ion source wherein heating of dropletsemerging from the electrospray capillary under the influence of strongelectric field is provided by a microwave field between the spray tipand mass analyzer. U.S. Patent Application No. 20030226750 of Fennsuggests the use of AC voltage to produce charged droplets from thesolution emerging from a conducting capillary instead of DC voltage usedin conventional electro-spray ion sources. It was disclosed that theflow of the droplets for 60 Hz 5 kV AC voltage is similar to that of aconventional electrospray (ESI) ion source. In 2003 Ranasinghe et al.(U.S. patent application Ser. No. 2003/0001090) proposed to split theliquid flow from some separation device into two approximately equalstreams and direct them into two ion spray sources—the first oneproducing positive ions and the second one producing negative ions. TwoTOFMS systems are used to record positive and negative ions separately.

In 2002, Berggren, et al. (U.S. patent application Ser. No.2002/0166961) described a charged droplet source for mass spectrometerwith the focusing of droplets and ions using an aerodynamic lens. Thislens is a sequence of coaxial apertures where the gas flow comes throughorifices with decreasing diameter so that charged particles are focusedto some extent.

In 2003 Cornish et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 6,580,070) suggested to combineseveral relatively simple coaxial TOFMS systems with MALDI or laserablation ion sources. One array located inside a vacuum chamber provideshigh throughput analysis of several samples or one large sample indifferent points. In 2004 Hobbs, et al. (U.S. patent application Ser.No. 20040217279) described multianalyzer mass-spectrometer for theparallel analysis of multiple samples preferably coupled with fluidphase separation techniques

All of the above-referenced U.S. patents and published U.S. patentapplications are incorporated by reference as though fully describedherein.

Although much of the prior art resulted in improvements in ion focusing,separation and in ion throughput from ion source to the mobility celland to the mass spectrometer in tandem instruments, there is room foradditional improvement in all these directions. The inventors describeherein a concept and designs of multi-beam ion mobility and massseparations with multi-channel data recording which result in variety ofinstrumental embodiments to provide improved ion production frominvestigated samples, their separation and measurements.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is directed to a system and method for massspectrometric analysis of samples. The present invention mainly dealswith systems and methods using ion mobility drift cells for transportingions through a high pressure gas to a TOF MS. The following concepts aredescribed in various embodiments of the present invention: (i)multi-beam ion pre-selection from a single sample, (ii) coordinatedmobility and mass separation of ions by single or plural TOFMS(independently for different beams) with controllable, on-demand ionfragmentation, and (iii) multi-channel data recording to increase theefficiency of sample use in the analysis or to obtain as much usefulinformation as possible about the sample in a reasonably short time.Specifically, the improvements lie in (i) extracting or producing bothpositive and negative ions from the sample (ii) accumulation andpost-ionization of neutrals, (iii) trapping of ions in a plurality oftraps, (iv) improved ion transportation against the gas flow intomobility cells, and (v) a new design for a mobility cell/TOFMS interfacecomprising well collimated supersonic cooled gas flows into a uniquemulti-channel RF-ion guide. In comparison to conventional methods,improvement (v) provides significantly lower divergence of the ion beamentering the TOF MS which in turn improves the mass resolution and massaccuracy of the TOFMS measurement. Because of this new approach, thedivergence of the ion beam is low enough to use a simple linear TOFMSinstead of more complicated reflectron type TOFMS and still obtain massresolution in the range of several thousands. It is possible also todecrease further the divergence of the ion beam by using parabolic (orquasi-parabolic) ion mirror made of conductor coated by a variety ofnon-conducting (or poorly conducting) thin films. Parabolic mirrorsinclude parabolic mirrors, cylindrical parabolic mirrors, and otherparabolic variations. It is possible in this case to achieve resolvingpowers of more than 10000 for small (˜20 cm length) lineartime-of-flight mass spectrometer. The multi-channel data recordingsystem not only acquires separate data from each ion mobility channelbut also provides an increased dynamic range of for ion intensitymeasurements within the TOFMS. It also allows the determination ofadditional characteristics of ions such as velocity and divergence,which in conditions close to equilibrium with gas flow, provides adirect estimation of the charge state. These advantages of multi-channeldata recording may also be implemented in a simple way in a linearTOFMS. These improvements may be used to increase throughput from an ionsource to downstream instruments and they may also provide additionalinformation about the samples beyond merely summing of the data fordifferent ion beams. The resulting instruments and methods are usefulfor qualitative and/or quantitative chemical and biological analysis.

In the present invention it is taught to accumulate both negative andpositive ions from MALDI target or from other sources (secondary ionsources, fast atom bombardment sources, electrospray source, atmosphericpressure ionization sources) in RF multi-pole ion traps, which gives apossibility to collect ions from the target while the previous portionof ions is moving and being recorded. It may give better and moreeffective conditions for producing and collecting ions and thus highersensitivity. After ion accumulation the operation of the RF-multi-poleion traps is altered so that ions of both sign ions can be insertedagainst the buffer gas flow into the two opposing arrays ofmulti-channel ion mobility cells. After the insertion of the largestdesired ions into the entrance plane of a desired ion mobility channel,the cycle of ion accumulation is repeated once again. The main advantageof such ion insertion against the gas flow compared to prior art is thesignificant increase of mobility resolution and better control over thetime of mobility separation.

In one aspect of the present invention, there is an apparatus foranalyzing a flow of gaseous ions or mixture of gaseous ions and gaseousneutral species, the apparatus comprising an ion mobility assemblycomprising an ion trapping region comprising a plurality of ion traps toreceive the flow of gaseous ions or mixture of gaseous ions and gaseousneutral species; a plurality of parallel mobility tubes, each of themobility tubes fluidly coupled to the ion trapping region; optionally, aplurality of parallel CID tubes, each of the CID tubes fluidly coupledto at least one of the mobility tubes; optionally, a plurality ofparallel exit tubes, each of the exit tubes comprising at least oneelectrode and being fluidly coupled to at least one of the CID tubes orto at least one of the mobility tubes; and, at least one multi-channelRF ion guide fluidly coupled to at least one of the exit tubes, at leastone of the CID tubes, or at least one of the mobility tubes; the ionmobility assembly having a separation axis in a first direction; and, atleast one TOFMS fluidly coupled to the ion mobility assembly, the TOFMScomprising a position sensitive detector. In some embodiments, the iontrapping region is operable under a pressure of about 0.1 to about 10Torr. In some embodiments, the plurality of ion traps comprises areleast one RF ion trap. In some embodiments, the plurality of ion trapscomprises at least one DC field trap. In some embodiments, the apparatusfurther comprises voltage grids between the ion traps and the firstmobility tubes. In some embodiments, the apparatus further comprises atleast one collimating electrode between the ion traps and the firstmobility tubes. In some embodiments of the apparatus, the mobility tubescomprise a front element operable at variable voltage biases. In someembodiments, the front element comprises a discrete section ofcapillaries, a microchannel plate section, or a combination thereof. Insome embodiments, the one or more of the mobility tubes and/or CID tubescomprises a surface which is at least partially coated with a thindielectric film. In some embodiments, the at least one of themulti-channel RF ion guides comprises multiple pairs of rods andconfining plates. In some embodiments, the apparatus further comprisesat least one ion mirror between the at least one multi-channel RF ionguide and the at least one TOFMS. In some embodiments comprising atleast one mirror, the at least one ion mirror comprises a conductorcoated by a dielectric film. In some embodiments comprising at least onemirror comprising a conductor coated by a dielectric film, the at leastone ion mirror comprises a parabolic mirror, a cylindrical parabolicmirror, or a quasi-parabolic mirror; and, a flat mirror. In someembodiments comprising at least one mirror comprising a conductor coatedby a dielectric film, the ion mirror comprises a surface that ischarged. In some embodiments comprising at least one mirror comprising aconductor coated by a dielectric film wherein the ion mirrors comprisethin metallic strips, the strips being alternately biased by positiveand negative voltages, the voltages being RF voltages or DC voltages. Insome embodiments comprising at least one mirror comprising a conductorcoated by a dielectric film, the ion mirrors comprise electrode stripson a piezoelectric film surface. In some embodiments of the apparatus,the apparatus further comprises an ion interface assembly located at ahigh pressure/high vacuum interface between the ion mobility assemblyand the at least one TOFMS. In some embodiments wherein the apparatusfurther comprises an ion interface assembly located at a highpressure/high vacuum interface between the ion mobility assembly and theat least one TOFMS, the ion interface assembly comprises an entryelectrode, one or more focusing electrode assemblies, at least one ionmirror with a dielectric coating, a sectioned tube coated with adielectric film, and a field-free tube coated with a dielectric film andhaving a larger diameter than the sectioned tube. In some embodiments ofthe apparatus, the TOFMS comprises a multi-channel detector. In someembodiments, the TOFMS is an oTOFMS. In some embodiments, the TOFMS is aLoTOFMS. In some embodiments, the TOFMS is a gridless LoTOFMS. In someembodiments, the ion mobility assembly comprises more than one ionmobility assembly and wherein one or more pairs of the more than one ionmobility assembly are opposed pairs. In some embodiments, the apparatusfurther comprises repeller electrodes divided into strips, the repellerelectrodes located between the ion traps and the mobility tubes. In someembodiments, the apparatus further comprises an orthogonal collectionregion. In some embodiments comprising an orthogonal collection region,the orthogonal collection region comprises one or more voltage grids. Insome embodiments, the apparatus further comprises a source for thegeneration of the flow of gaseous ions or mixture of gaseous ions andgaseous neutral species, the source being fluidly coupled to the ionmobility assembly, and the source being configured to generate the flowin a direction that is orthogonal to the first direction. In someembodiments of that apparatus having an orthogonal source and ionmobility assembly, the source further comprises means forpost-ionization of gaseous ions or gaseous mixtures of ions. In someembodiments of that apparatus having an orthogonal source and ionmobility assembly, the source is selected from the group consisting of alaser desorption source, a cluster bombardment source, a secondary ionsource, an electrospray ionization source, photoionization source, apneumo-spray source, an atmospheric pressure ionization source, and anycombination thereof. In some embodiments wherein the source is a laserdesorption source, the laser desorption source is a matrix assistedlaser desorption ionization source. In some embodiments of the apparatuswherein a source is present, the source is a secondary ion source. Insome embodiments employing a secondary ion source, the apparatus furthercomprises an electrically conducting input tube having an entranceregion and an exit region, the entrance region fluidly coupled to thesource and the exit region fluidly coupled to the ion trapping region.In some embodiments employing a secondary ion source and furthercomprising an electrically conducting input tube having an entranceregion and an exit region with the entrance region fluidly coupled tothe source and the exit region fluidly coupled to the ion trappingregion, the electrically conducting input tube has an internal surfacecomprising a dielectric film coating. In some embodiments employing asecondary ion source and further comprising an electrically conductinginput tube having an entrance region and an exit region with theentrance region fluidly coupled to the source and the exit regionfluidly coupled to the ion trapping region, the ion trapping regioncomprises a plurality of electrode triads and a plurality of RFquadrupoles. In some embodiments employing a secondary ion source, theapparatus further comprises a laser source positioned to provide laserradiation to the ion trapping region.

In one aspect of the present invention, there is a method of analyzing asample comprising the steps of creating a flow of gaseous ions ormixture of gaseous ions and gaseous neutral species from the sample, theflow having an axis of flow in a first direction; injecting the flowinto an ion mobility assembly, the ion mobility assembly comprising: anion trapping region comprising a plurality of ion traps to receive theflow; a plurality of parallel mobility tubes, each of the mobility tubesfluidly coupled to at least one of the ion traps; optionally, aplurality of parallel CID tubes, each of the CID tubes fluidly coupledto at least one of the mobility tubes; optionally, a plurality ofparallel exit tubes, each of the exit tubes comprising at least oneelectrode and being fluidly coupled to at least one of the CID tubes orto at least one of the mobility tubes; and, at least one multi-channelRF ion guide fluidly coupled to at least one of the parallel exit tubes,at least one of the CID tubes, or at least one of the mobility tubes;the ion mobility assembly having a separation axis that is orthogonal tothe first direction; and, thereafter injecting the flow into at leastone TOFMS fluidly coupled to the ion mobility assembly, the TOFMScomprising a position sensitive detector. In some embodiments, the stepof creating comprises the step of applying a collimated stream of gas tothe flow. In some embodiments, the method further comprises the step ofmaintaining a pressure of about 0.1 to about 10 Torr in the ion trappingregion. In some embodiments, the method further comprises the step ofapplying a DC electric field to the ion trapping region. In someembodiments, the method further comprises the step of applying an RFvoltage to the ion trapping region. In some embodiments, the step ofcreating further comprises the step of applying an RF voltage to theflow before the step of injecting the flow through the ion mobilityassembly, wherein the RF voltage applied to the flow before the step ofinjecting through the ion mobility assembly is shifted by π/2 withrespect to the RF voltage applied in the ion trapping region. In someembodiments, the method further comprises the step of cooling the flowbefore the step of injecting the flow through the at least one TOFMS. Insome embodiments of the method, the step of cooling comprises coolingwith supersonic gas flows. In some embodiments of the method, the stepof creating comprises extracting and ionizing gaseous neutral speciesfrom a gaseous sample plume. In some embodiments of the method whereinthe step of creating comprises extracting and ionizing gaseous neutralspecies from a gaseous sample plume, the said step of extractingcomprises passing a collimated stream of gas through the gaseous sampleplume. In some embodiments of the method wherein the step of creatingcomprises extracting and ionizing gaseous neutral species from a gaseoussample plume, the step of ionizing comprises ionizing with laserradiation. In some embodiments of the method wherein the step ofcreating comprises extracting and ionizing gaseous neutral species froma gaseous sample plume, the step of ionizing comprises fragmentation ofneutral zwitterions. In some embodiments of the method, one or more ofthe plurality of parallel mobility tubes comprise a front element andthe method further comprises the step of applying a constant or variablevoltage bias to the front element. In some embodiments of the method,the at least one multi-channel RF ion guide comprises one or moremulti-pole RF ion guides. In some embodiments wherein the at least onemulti-channel RF ion guide comprises one or more multi-pole RF ionguides, the multi-pole RF ion guides comprises two or more rods and themethod further comprises the step of applying a voltage of varying phaseand amplitude to the rods. In some embodiments of the method, the stepof creating the flow comprises creating droplets with a componentselected from the group consisting of an electrospray source, apneumo-spray source, an atmospheric pressure ionization source, and anycombination thereof. In some embodiments of the method comprising thestep of creating droplets, the method further comprises the step ofsplitting the droplets into positively and negatively charged dropletsby a quasi-resonant sound frequency field or an ultrasound frequencyelectric field. In some embodiments of the method comprising the step ofcreating droplets, the method further comprises the step of drying thedroplets by ambient gas heating, microwave absorption, or a combinationthereof. In some embodiments of the method comprising the step ofcreating droplets, the method further comprises the step of applying anelectric field to the droplets. In some embodiments of the method, thestep of creating the flow comprises creating the flow with a componentselected from the group consisting of a laser desorption source, acluster bombardment source, a secondary ion source, an electrosprayionization source, photoionization source, and any combination thereof.In some embodiments of the method, the method further comprises passingsaid flow through a differentially pumped low pressure region betweenthe ion mobility assembly and the TOFMS. In some embodiments of themethod, the step of injecting the flow through an ion mobility assemblycomprises injecting the flow through more than one ion mobility assemblyand wherein one or more pairs of the more than one ion mobility assemblyare opposed pairs. In some embodiments of the method, the step ofinjecting the flow through at least one TOFMS comprises injecting theflow into at least one TOFMS comprising a multi-channel detector. Insome embodiments of the method, the at least one TOFMS is at least oneoTOFMS. In some embodiments, the at least one TOFMS is at least oneLoTOFMS. In some embodiments wherein the at least one TOFMS is at leastone LoTOFMS, the at least one LoTOFMS is at least one gridless LoTOFMS.In some embodiments of the method, the step of creating comprisescreating with a secondary ion source. In some embodiments of the methodcomprising creating the flow of gaseous ions or mixture of gaseous ionsand gaseous neutral species with a secondary ion source, the methodfurther comprises the step of passing the flow through an electricallyconducting input tube having an entrance region and an exit region priorto the step of injecting the beams through said ion mobility assembly Insome embodiments of the method, the ion trapping region comprises aplurality of electrode triads and a plurality of RF quadrupoles. In someembodiments of the method, the method further comprises the step ofpost-ionizing neutral species in the ion trapping region with laserradiation.

The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technicaladvantages of the present invention in order that the detaileddescription of the invention that follows may be better understood.Additional features and advantages of the invention will be describedhereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention. Itshould be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the conceptionand specific embodiment disclosed may be readily utilized as a basis formodifying or designing other structures for carrying out the samepurposes of the present invention. It should also be realized by thoseskilled in the art that such equivalent constructions do not depart fromthe spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appendedclaims. The novel features which are believed to be characteristic ofthe invention, both as to its organization and method of operation,together with further objects and advantages will be better understoodfrom the following description when considered in connection with theaccompanying figures. It is to be expressly understood, however, thateach of the figures is provided for the purpose of illustration anddescription only and is not intended as a definition of the limits ofthe present invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

For a more complete understanding of the present invention, reference isnow made to the following descriptions taken in conjunction with theaccompanying drawing, in which:

FIG. 1. Schematic diagram of a measuring unit for multi-beam ionmobility drift cell TOFMS with multi-channel data recording, common formost of the embodiments of the invention.

FIG. 2. Minimal potential difference in space near a conductor coatedwith a 1000 Å thick dielectric film on which are placed uniformlydistributed surface charges. Computer simulations of the potential fromthree structures with different minimal distances between the chargesare shown.

FIG. 3. Drawing of the experimental setup used to test the ion coolingprocess in a well-collimated flow of helium. All internal surfacesparallel to the gas flow are coated by thin dielectric film and chargedby the glow discharge before the measurements.

FIG. 4. Distribution of helium ion beam experimentally measured usingthe setup shown in FIG. 3. Intensity through a sliding slit is measured.This distribution corresponds to the helium flow temperature of ˜1Kimplying that helium ions are in equilibrium with gas flow.

FIG. 5. Distribution of C₆Br₆ ⁺ ions, corresponding to 10-20Ktemperature range.

FIG. 6. Schematic diagram of a multi-beam MALDI ion source withextraction and trapping of both sign ions using an RF-field and a gasflow for tissue imaging.

FIG. 7. Top view of FIG. 6. After RF accumulation is suspended positiveions are inserted to the left, negative ions—to the right.

FIG. 8. Schematic diagram of a multi-beam MALDI ion source showingextraction and trapping of ions of both signs as well as neutrals by thecombined effects of RF-fields and a well collimated gas flow followed bypost-ionization of neutrals.

FIG. 9. Section A-A of FIG. 8. Trapped neutrals are shown in the center,negative ions from the MALDI target on the left, and positive ions onthe right. After inserting accumulated ions into left and rightmeasuring units, neutrals are ionized. Positive ions from neutrals aftertheir ionization go to the top measuring unit, negative ions—to thebottom one.

FIG. 10. Possible ways of trapping and inserting ions when MCPs are usedfor mobility separation.

FIG. 11. Schematic view of the middle region of mobility cell wherecollision induced dissociation of selected ions is performed.

FIG. 12. Schematic view of the interface used to introduce separate ionbeams into TOFMS.

FIG. 13. Schematic view of the linear TOFMS collecting and massanalyzing multi-ion beams.

FIG. 14. Schematic view of the plate used to record separate ion beamsin the TOFMS.

FIG. 15. Possible anode distribution of ion counts for the fifth ionbeam.

FIG. 16. Multi-beam TOFMS entrance interface for SIMS measurements withseparation of ions according to their kinetic energy.

FIG. 17. Retarding and locking potential distribution and changing ofkinetic energy of ions coming into the trapping region of the interfaceshown in FIG. 16.

FIG. 18. Schematic view of the proposed electrospray interface.

FIG. 19. Schematic view of the proposed corona discharge API interface.

FIG. 20. Schematic diagram showing a multi-beam storage device forpositive ions and attached neutrals from electrospray or coronadischarge ion source with post-ionization of neutrals. The same storagemay be used for negative ions and attached neutrals by inverting theelectric field polarity.

FIG. 21. Section A-A from FIG. 20. Neutrals are trapped in the center,positive ions are shifted to the right.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

As used herein, “a” or “an” means one or more, unless otherwiseexpressly indicated or obvious from the context. This is particularlytrue when reference is made to instrumental apparatuses or individualcomponents of the same.

As used herein, a “plurality” means two or more (i.e., more than one).

As used herein, an “electrode triad” is a distinct group or cluster ofthree electrodes.

As used herein, a “mobility cell assembly” is defined as a single ormulti-channel device which performs mobility separation of ions andcomprises a first mobility tube, collision induced dissociation (CID)tubes wherein collision-induced ionization occurs, and final iontransport with cooling gas flow through “exit tubes” into multi-channelRF-ion guide. In the multi-channel embodiment, the mobility cellassembly comprises a plurality of first mobility tubes, CID tubes, exittubes and RF-ion guides, preferably with each of the aforementionedcomponent in series with one another and each series in parallel with atleast one other series.

As used herein, “mobility tube” is an ion mobility cell or other cellfor the transport of ions; the terms ion mobility cell and mobility tubeare synonymous herein.

As used herein “collision induced dissociation tube” or “CID tube” is atube in which high electric fields may be created sufficient to providecollision-induced dissociation of ions. In the present invention, theCID tube, when present can be used for collision-induced dissociation oralternatively, the collision-induced dissociation mode may be disabledand the CID tube may be used for cooling such as gas cooling and/or RFcooling.

As used herein “exit tube” is a tube with a diameter less than apreceding tube to which it is fluidly coupled, said exit tube being usedas a gas collimating and ion transport tube.

As used herein, the term “separation axis” as it relates to an ionmobility assembly or any individual component of an ion mobilityassembly is the axis defining the direction of travel of ions and/orneutral species traversing or being transported through the ion mobilityassembly or any individual component of the ion mobility assembly.

As used herein, a “ion trapping region” or “trapping region” is part ofthe entrance interface between the ion source and the mobility cellwhere ions preferably of both signs and possibly neutrals areaccumulated. Neutrals are ionized and the resulting ions are trapped inmultiple traps before penetrating a mobility cell.

As used herein, an “orthogonal collection region” is defined by thevolume between at least one electrode and/or voltage grid pair throughwhich ions (possibly of both signs) and neutrals which are mixed with acarrier gas pass orthogonally in front of the entrance of at least oneIM tube. Neutrals which are formed within the gas flow through thisregion are transformed into ions by an ionization or fragmentationprocess (such as by a laser) within this region.

As used herein, “MALDI” means matrix assisted laser desorptionionization.

As used herein, “SIMS” means secondary ion mass spectrometry.

As used herein, “FAB” means fast atom bombardment mass spectrometry.

As used herein, the term “TOFMS” is defined as a time-of-flight massspectrometer including both the linear or reflectron type; as usedherein, “oTOFMS” is defined as a time-of-flight mass spectrometer bothlinear or reflectron type configured orthogonally to the analytical axisof a preceding instrumental platform such as, for example, theseparation axis of an ion mobility cell; “LoTOFMS” is specificallydefined as a linear oTOFMS. The oTOFMS and the LoTOFMS are examples of aTOFMS.

As used herein IM-oTOFMS refers to a combination of an Ion mobilityspectrometer with an orthogonal time of flight mass spectrometer.

In applications which use ion mobility cells filled with a few Torr ofbuffer gas as a volume/charge separation stage in front of a massspectrometer, the cooled ions exit through a small aperture into adifferentially pumped low pressure region before the high vacuum regionof the mass spectrometer. To minimize transmission losses through thesmall aperture, the ion beam inside the mobility cell should be focused.Ion beams should be as narrow and parallel as possible in the regionbetween the mobility cell and TOFMS to allow the use of smalldifferential pumping apertures (enabling lower gas flow) and to achievehigher mass resolution for TOFMS operation. Therefore the beam should becooled as much as possible to obtain low divergence. If this divergenceis small in directions orthogonal to the direction of the initial ionbeam, then multiple ion beams may be kept isolated all the way from theion source to the multichannel detector plane in the TOFMS in order toincrease the instrument throughput (proportional to the number of ionbeams). Such an approach is feasible because: (i) devices formulti-channel data recording (multi-channel time-to-digital converter(“TDC”)) are available and widely used; (ii) it is possible to transportions inside small tubes without losses by coating conducting surfaceswith thin dielectric films as described in details below; (iii) it ispossible to organize mobility separation of ions in a gas counter-flowin a controllable time scale so that the use of different channels ofTDC for position sensitive detection may be used for recording ofplurality of ion beams; (iv) gas flow through narrow tubes from highpressure to vacuum can have divergence corresponding to a gastemperature of 1° K. or less; and (v) ions hundreds of times heavierthan gas atoms and traveling in such a gas flow may have a divergencecorresponding to about 10° K. temperature.

In the present invention, a multichannel IM-oTOFMS detection unit (400)shown schematically in FIG. 1 and comprises a ion mobility assembly(comprising multi-channel ion mobility drift cells) coupled to a oTOFMS(124) with multi-channel data recording is used for differentembodiments for analysis of ions of both signs which are intimatelymixed with a gas flow (66). These ions may be directly produced by knownion sources such as MALDI and ESI and are subsequently combined within agas flow (66) in which they are transported into an ion trapping region(1) where they can be further localized within multiple RF traps (2).The ion traps n the ion trapping region may also be DC field traps. Insome embodiments ions may be injected into detection unit (400) as shownin FIG. 1 by a gas flow (66) which spreads the entrained ions across thefront element (40) of each the ion mobility tubes. Alternatively someembodiments will bring multiple source of ions simultaneously into thetrapping region (1) of unit (400) by a motion along axes into the FIG. 1which bring each ions from each ion source into specific registry withone of the multiple mobility channels. Ions may also be created withinthis region (1) by post-ionization of any neutral analyte which has beenalso entrained in the gas flow (66) along with the directly producedions. The preferred means for post-ionization of neutrals is laserirradiation of the flow or plume containing the neutrals, however othermeans, such as, but not limited to, electron attachment, chemicalionization, use of a metastable atom beam, helium ion Augerneutralization, and other means known to those of skill in the art areapplicable. Whatever the method of introduction of the ion laden gasflow (66) the ions are accumulated in the trapping region (1) inseparate RF traps (2) so that individual ion beams (13) can ultimatelybe formed and transported through an multi-channel IM drift cells. Thedirection of travel through the IM drift cells and the remainder of theion mobility assembly defines the separation axis of the ion mobilityassembly. Depending on the shape and mass of the ions some pre-selectionbetween different traps may be achieved during the filling process. Toprovide favorable conditions for RF ion trapping, the gas pressureinside the trapping region is maintained at the level between a few Torrand a few tenths of Torr by appropriate pumping (9). After ionaccumulation in the RF trapping region (1), DC biases are applied togrid (3) to move ions to quasi-stationary new locations next to theentrance element (40) of the corresponding first mobility tube (14) andthe ion are localized there by a combination of a part of the gas flow(6) emanating ultimately through the front element (40) of the IM tube(14) (element (40) may at this time have close to zero electric fieldacross it) and by the electric field provided by collimating electrodes(4) and grid (3). The front element (40) may simply be severalelectrodes of the IM tube (14) which can controllably biasedalternatively to near or below zero while ions are being accumulated inthe trapping region and then to some attractive potential whichinitiates the ion flow (13) through the IM tube (14). Alternatively thefront element may be a discrete section of capillaries or may even be amicrochannel plate section which is fluidly coupled to the front end ofeach IM tube (14). Preferably, the surface around the entrance of one ormore of the mobility tubes (14) and the front element (40) may be coatedwith thin dielectric or piezoelectric thin films and charged before theexperiment by charges of the same sign as the ions which are beingtrapped. Ions located around the corresponding entrance are insertedinto individual IM tubes (14) by rapidly changing the field on the frontelement (40) and inside the mobility tube (14) from zero to a valuewhich will begin the transport of the ions from region (1) to theirultimate analysis in the oTOFMS (124). Trapped ions thus start theirmotion (13) against the gas flow so that smaller ions with largemobility move most quickly. To prevent an influence of differentelectrodes voltages on the traps (2) a certain DC voltage, sometimes,mixed with RF voltage, is applied to the screening grid (3) throughoution accumulation. Once trapped ions have been introduced into the IManalyzer assembly the RF trapping region (1) can be re-activated and thetrapping of ions from the continuous incoming flow (66) resumed. Afteremerging from the mobility entrance section (14), ions travel to themiddle region of the ion mobility cell (5) where gas flow (6) isinserted and the pressure is maintained constant. This pressure may bebetween 1 and several tens of Torr. Most commonly the gas will behelium, although other gases or gas mixtures may be used. CID can beperformed in the region (5) between IM tubes (14) and/or between IM tube(14) and exit tube (16). While the figure shows gaps in this region itshould be emphasized that this entire assembly can be continuous and theCID produced by local biasing of discrete elements within one continuousassembly. It is equally possible to build these as discrete elements.Accordingly, throughout this document and including the claims, where areference may be made to a number of discrete elements (e.g., a mobilitytube, a CID tube, an exit tube, etc.), it should be understood that thisencompasses these elements as discrete elements or as part of onecontinuous assembly. Thus, extending the previous example, one tube maycomprise a mobility section, a CID section, an exit section, or anycombination thereof. The usual function of the discrete components orsections of a continuous assembly is to collect ions coming from apreceding discrete component or section such as a mobility tube (whichmay be a first mobility tube) and transport them to a succeedingdiscrete component or section of a continuous assembly, which may be anexit tube (16) as shown in FIG. 1 (see also FIG. 12 for a verticalcross-section of this region of FIG. 1).

It should be noted that the instrument of FIG. 1 could optionallycomprise an orthogonal collection region located upstream of the iontrapping region. The orthogonal collection region would comprise avolume between at least one electrode and/or grid pair through whichions (possibly of both signs) and neutrals which are mixed with acarrier gas pass orthogonally in front of the entrance of at least oneIM tube. Neutrals which are formed within the gas flow through thisregion may be transformed into ions by an ionization or fragmentationprocess (such as by a laser) within this region. With reference to FIG.1, the orthogonal collection region would be located to the left of iontrapping region (1). In such cases, as ions and neutrals travel in theflow (66), they enter the orthogonal collection region and areaccumulated by the manipulation of the voltages on the voltage grids andor electrodes. By intermittently applying voltages on grids and./orelectrodes, it is possible to create a field which moves ions orthogonalto the direction of ion/gas flow motion and into the ion trappingregion, thereby providing control of the filling of the ion trappingregion.

The ions may be transported to one or more intervening mobility tubes inseries with an exit tube. At certain time intervals high electric fieldmay be created inside or between sections to provide CID (collisioninduced dissociation) of specific ions. Alternatively, the front sectionof the exit tube element (16) can either be used for CID or can be usedfor cooling applications without collision induced dissociation. Afterpassing through the middle region of mobility cell (5) ions penetratethe region of exit tubes (7). The exit tube (16) diameter is less thanthe preceding tube (15) to which it is fluidly coupled and is used as agas collimating tube. The mobility carrier gas flows through each exittube (16) along with mobility separated ions. The exit tubes (16) mustalso have electrodes for creating electric fields which will move ionssince the gas flow at the beginning of these tubes is relatively slow.By choosing and controlling the pressures in region (7) and region (8)it is possible to create a highly directed gas beam which emerges fromthe exit tubes into vacuum with low divergence (corresponding to theabsolute temperature of about 1K or lower). Ions moving with gas inthese tubes are only partially cooled since they do not have quiteenough time to come close to equilibrium with the helium gas flow, sotheir divergence is somewhat higher. It is at this point that amulti-channel RF-ion guide (8) is used to focus and cool each ion beam(123) so that the ions attain the velocity close to that of cooled IMbuffer gas beam (Helium in the example). This ion guide (8) comprisesmultiple pairs of rods (18) (in the horizontal plane) each pair of whichis separated by confining plates (17) (in the vertical plane).RF-voltage of the same phase is applied to the rods (18). Confiningplates (17) have the same voltage as oTOFMS (10). These plates providefocusing of ions between rods of each pair. This apparatus provides lowdivergent ion beams which may be inserted through small orifices (19)directly into an oTOFMS or alternatively (as shown in FIG. 1) into adifferential pumping region (127) containing special ion mirrors (20,21).

Reference to FIG. 12 and FIG. 1 show that the ion beam may be made evenmore nearly parallel by two reflections from ion mirrors (20, 21)constructed from thin film coated conductors. Both mirrors (20, 21) aremade of a conductor coated by a thin charged dielectric film.Alternatively the mirror may be made of thin metallic strips (a fewmicron-wide separated by a few micron) each strip of which is biasedalternatively with a fixed positive and negative voltage or even an RFvoltage. This assembly may be optionally covered with a thin dielectricfilm. Alternatively piezoelectric thin film with thin alternatingelectrodes which can be controllably biased with DC or RF voltages maybe used. The reflection sequence of the cooled ion beam from the mirrorcan be best understood by first reference to FIG. 12 (which is avertical cross-section of FIG. 1) and then referring back to FIG. 1. Thefirst reflection of the ion beams are from parabolic mirrors such acylindrical parabolic mirrors (20) and the second reflection is fromflat mirrors (21). The focus line of the parabolic mirror crosses theinput orifices (19) so that, after reflection in the vertical plane, thediverging ion beams (123) become nearly parallel. This nearly parallelbeam (135) is then reflected from the second mirror (21) (flat) so thatthe ions cross the second set of apertures (121) and enter the oTOFMS(124). By contrast, the IM buffer gas flow (128) is reflected diffuselyfrom the parabolic mirror (20) and is efficiently pumped (12). Thus onlymoderate pumping speeds (11) is needed to provide sufficient vacuum inthe TOFMS analyzer. This is a further advantage of this invention andcontrasts to prior art designs relying on skimmer cones which areco-axial to the ion and gas flow paths. In FIG. 1, a series of eightparallel channels are shown; however, this can vary from one series toany number of series greater than one. Alternatively the reflection ofthe diverging cooled ion beam (123) could be done with only onecylindrical parabolic mirror so that the beam would exit thedifferential pumping region (127) at some angle (such as 90 degrees)relative to the axis of the axis of the RF cooling assembly. The oTOFMSwould then be oriented to receive the cooled parallel ion beam afteronly one reflection. An alternative embodiment which is slightly moredifficult to manufacture would to have a parabolic mirror (127) insteadof a cylindrical parabolic shape. This would focus the diverging cooledbeam (123) into a parallel beam with a round cross-section.

In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, charged thin filmcoatings of conducting surfaces are used to increase the mobility cellion transmission. This coating was described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,992,284to Schultz, et. al. where the coating is used to increase the mobilitycell ion transmission. The result of computer calculation of potentialdistribution near such coated surface is shown in FIG. 2. Assuming auniform distribution of positive charges on the surface of 1000 Å thickdielectric film (24), the point for potential calculation is chosenbetween the charges (22). It is shown that for each positive charge onthe surface the corresponding virtual “mirror” negative charge is formedinside the conductor (23) at the distance from the conductor surfaceequal to the thickness of the film. The set of dipoles on the surface isformed and potentials of their electric fields for the minimal distancesbetween positive charges of 100 Å, 200 Å and 300 Å are shown. If ionsmoving in gas have the energy in the direction orthogonal to thesurface, which is lower than the calculated potential of the surface,ions cannot reach the surface and are reflected back. Taking intoaccount the permittivity of the dielectric reduces the potential valuesproportionally to the value of permittivity.

In another embodiment of the present invention, there is a significantcooling of gas emerging from the tube connecting regions of differentialpressures. Corresponding measurements were performed using experimentalsetup which is shown in FIG. 3. Two parts of the setup are shown here:A, ion source and B, ion interface assembly. Outer poly-foam jacket (25)confines the glow discharge ion source. The following parts of thesource are shown: high voltage lead (26), stainless steal housing (27),inner Teflon insertion (28), outer HV electrode (29) and inner HVelectrode (30). The ion interface assembly comprises following parts:entry electrode of the interface (31), voltage leads of electrodes (32),focusing electrode assembly (33), ion mirror with dielectric coating(34), centering Teflon bushing (35), and interface housing (36). Heliumions mixed with hexabromobenzene (C₆Br₆) ions from the ion source, A,come to the sectioned tube (37) with electric field inside. This tube(0.7 mm in diameter and about 5 mm long) has high pressure (severalTorr) at the inlet and about 10000 times lower gas pressure at theoutlet. The tube is coated inside with dielectric film. Ions cooled bythe gas flow enter a larger (1.5 mm in diameter, 1 cm long) field-freetube, which is also coated with dielectric film. The ion mirror, formedby two plates (34) and coated with charged dielectric film, preventsnarrow gas flow from going directly into the detection section. Ionsonly have some parallel displacement of their trajectories due to mirrorreflection, but the helium flow has diffusion reflection and the mainpart of the flow is pumped away by the first stage pumping. Furtherdownstream (about 14 cm from the interface) ions go through a slidingslit, and finally reach a secondary multiplier and are counted by an ioncounter.

FIG. 4 shows the result of measurements using pure helium in the ionsource. Round symbols represent experimental data. The solid line is asimulated Gaussian distribution corresponding to the ion beam averageangular divergence of 0.046 rad. equivalent to an ion temperature of˜1K. Since the charge exchange between helium ions and atoms is aresonant process with high cross-section, it is highly probable thathelium ions and atoms are in thermodynamic equilibrium in the flow.Therefore, 1K is the estimation for the helium atom temperature as well.This is a lower limit estimation since helium ions must come through thetwo plate ion mirror which is not ideal and may contribute to additionaldivergence of the ions. It is also possible that some portion of ionsinside this mirror may give their charge to helium atoms which are thenreflected in random directions from the mirror plates which increasesthe ion divergence. Theoretical estimation of the gas temperature isabout 0.3K.

Data shown in FIG. 5 is for the C6Br6/helium ion mixture. The averageion beam angular divergence is about 0.021 rad. Thus, the upperestimation of the ion temperature is about 10 to 20K. The upperestimation is achieved for ion drift velocity being equal to the gasdrift velocity ˜1400 m/sec. The lower estimation corresponds to the iondrift velocity ˜1000 m/sec. It is interesting to note that computersimulations predicted an angular divergence about two times higher thanthe measured value for this type of ions. This could be explained by theuse of a rigid model for ion-atom collisions in computer simulations. Weassume that after collision with ions the gas atoms travel in random(and uniformly distributed) directions in the center of mass referencesystem both in case of an elastic collision and a breakdown of apreviously formed ion-atom complex. This model may be valid for ionsmoving in “stationary” gas, but is not suitable for ions moving insidethe gas flow where atoms have a preferred direction of motion. When gasand ion temperatures decrease, the formation of ion-atom complexesbecomes more probable and their lifetime may be longer than the timebetween consecutive collisions. Therefore the next collision may destroythe complex and the probable direction of ejection of the atom involvedin the complex formation should be opposite to the impact direction ofthe new atom. In this case the relaxation of the kinetic energy of ionmay take place almost independently for the direction of the main motionof ions and the gas flow, and for the motion in orthogonal directions.Therefore, the divergence of ions may be significantly lower than thatpredicted by the ion-atom collision model used in the simulations. Themain conclusions from the experimental data are: a) coating ofelectrodes by thin dielectric film which, when charged, providesreflection of ions moving in a gas with relatively low energies; b)helium atoms going through tubes from relatively high to low pressureregions may be cooled significantly—close to or below 1K,—and ionsmoving with this flow may be cooled in a direction orthogonal to theflow, probably to the level of a few degrees K.

One embodiment of the present invention enables extraction of ions ofboth signs from several spots on a MALDI sample. This is shown in FIG. 6and FIG. 7, (which is the top view of FIG. 6). This embodiment ismotivated by the fact that extracting ions of only one sign enriches thesample surface with ions of the opposite sign so that continuouselectrostatic extraction of the desired ions becomes more and moredifficult. Ions may lose their initial charge and may also change theirconformation. It is better to extract both types of ions at once even ifonly one type of ions is detected. A sample (65) is located on a curved(cylindrical) surface (37) irradiated by several laser beams (46), Thissample (65) might be for example, a biological tissue slice into which aMADLI matrix has been intermixed; however, any flexible polymer couldalso be analyzed. Above this sample are located two multichannelIM-oTOFMS measuring units (400) in an opposed configuration with respectto one another and are fluidly coupled between the sample electrode (37)and RF electrode (48). “Opposed” in this sense includes, for example,“vertically opposed”, “horizontally opposed”, “diagonally opposed”,etc.; all that is required is that the opposing measuring units areconfigured 180° with respect to one another. The RF trapping region (1)as in FIG. 1 is defined by the surface electrode (37), the top RFelectrode (48) and by the collimating electrodes (4) two each on each IMentrance element (40) on two opposed units (400) one of which is biasedto transmit negative ions and the other of which is biased to transmitand detect positive ions. An RF-field (47) created between this surfaceelectrode (37) and the collimating electrodes of the mobility cells (4)extracts ions of both signs from the MALDI plume. It is necessary to usea convex sample plate to effectively extract ions of moderate size. Forlarge ions the effect of the gas flow (45) may become more important asthe effective RF-field force on the ions decreases with the ion mass.Ions of both signs arise into to the region where the RF-field is closeto zero (2) and are trapped there. A DC-field with field lines from leftto right is applied between the two opposed entrance elements (40) ofthe mobility tubes. This bias shifts the positive ions to the leftmobility cell and negative ions to the right. Therefore, ions ofdifferent sign have less probability to recombine during accumulation intraps. In addition to the RF-field, the gas flows (89) from the mobilitycells entrance (40) provide ion trapping in the vicinity of the mobilitycells. To trap ions from different spots on the MALDI target indifferent traps, the cylindrical MALDI target electrode (37) and the toprepeller electrodes (48) are both divided into strips (shown in FIG. 7(60)) where RF voltages with alternating phases are applied. Potentialsof the collimating electrodes (4) and the mobility tubes entranceelement (40) are DC. After having accumulated ions in traps (2) (seeFIG. 7), the DC field between the entrance elements (40) on the mobilitytubes is further increased to overcome trapping force of RF-field (47)and gas flows (89). Ions reach the IM drift cell entrance elements (40),which may be coated with a thin film and are trapped around orifices ofthe mobility tubes by the combined actions of the electric field betweencollimating electrodes and mobility tubes and the counter flow of gasfrom the tubes. Next, a new accumulation period starts. At the same timeions localized at the entrance elements (40) of the mobility cells areinserted into the tubes (14) by gradually increasing the electric fieldsinside the tubes and across element (40). Positive ions (41) go to theleft measuring unit (400) and the negative ions (52) to the right (400).The following details are also shown in FIG. 7: pairs of opposingmultichannel IM-oTOFMS measuring units (400), positive ion flow (41),trapped ions (2), a slit for pumping (58), the strips with alternatingRF-voltage (60), and negative ion flow (52).

Another way to maximize sample use is to collect neutrals from thesample plume and generate ions in addition to the ions initially formedin the MALDI plume. This is illustrated in FIG. 8 and FIG. 9. For theeffective extraction of neutrals from the MALDI plume produced by thelaser beam (46) from the target (65) (which may be a solid surface, agas volume or a liquid surface), a collimated gas flow such as a heliumflow (or of another gas or mixture of gases) (66) is used. The initialgas temperature is maintained at about 100° C. to increase the gas flowvelocity and thus provide some heating of the species coming from theMALDI plume. Ions of both signs from the MALDI plume are also subjectedto RF-field extraction force by applying an RF-voltage (67) between theMALDI target plane (65) and an opposite electrode (68). The phase ofthis voltage is shifted by π/2 compared to that of RF-voltages appliedin the trapping region (1) between sets of mobility tubes. The RF-field(64) is thus decreased from the region of the target to the locations oftraps (2) but there is no zero-field in any point of ion motion up tothe location of the first ion trap (2). As a result, no ions are trappedon their way into the trapping region. In ion traps a sequence ofRF-voltages are applied to the rods (60) with increasing amplitudes andalternating phases. If the drag from the gas flow is stronger than thefocusing force of the RF-field on large ions within the first trap, thenonly relatively small ions will be trapped in this RF-trap because thelarger ions will be carried through it by the gas flow. The initialvalue and increments of the trapping RF-voltages for subsequent trapsalong the line of the gas flow (66) can be chosen in such a way thatcontrollable different size separations would occur along the gas flowthrough all these traps. As the static gas pressure (˜10⁻³ Torr) insidethe gas flow (66) is significantly less than the pressure inside thetrapping region (1) (˜0.1 Torr), neutral atoms coming with the gas flowinto the trapping region will be concentrated inside the gas flow. Gasflows from mobility tubes (14) would push neutrals to the axis. Afterreaching the end of the trapping region and being reflected with gasflow from the warm wall 73) (set at about 100° C.) neutrals may comeback against the gas flow due to diffusion, but the gas flows will turnthem back to the axis of the trapping region. Thus the neutrals will beaccumulated along the axis and smaller neutrals with larger diffusioncoefficient will be located to the left while larger neutrals would belocated to the right end of the trapping region. At any given time orfrequency the accumulated neutrals may be ionized by a laser beam,electron beam, helium metastables, or by any other known means ofionization or ions and neutral may be fragmented by ionizing radiationfrom photons or particle bombardment.

FIG. 9 shows a cross-section of section AA in FIG. 8 which wouldincorporate four measuring units (400) in two opposing pairs. In orderto prevent ions and neutrals from interacting during the accumulation,positive and negative ions are shifted from the axis (82 and 84) ofaccumulation region by DC-electric field (87) and are stabilized byRF-field (80) and gas flows (89). Neutrals are located around axis (83)as shown in FIG. 9. It is now possible to separately measure first theions from the target (direct ions) and later ions from postionizedneutrals. To do so, ions after their accumulation would be injected intotwo measuring units (400) located to the left (81) and to the right (88)of the trapping region. Ionization of neutrals by a post-ionizationlaser beam (86) follows only after the direct ions have all been trappedand injected. It is of course possible to use the same measuring unitslocated at (81) and (88) to measure ions from neutrals and direct ions.First, direct ions are measured and only thereafter ions created fromneutrals (e.g. post-ionized) are introduced into the measuring units. Anew cycle of accumulation of ions and neutrals can start. Alternatively,two additional measuring units (400) located at the top (85) and thebottom (90) of the figure may be used to simultaneously measure bothtypes of ions and thus shorten the analysis time. During the ionizationof neutrals, a DC-voltage in the vertical direction (in the figure) isapplied and a DC-voltage in the horizontal direction is switched off. Sopositive and negative ions from neutrals are accumulated and cooled atdifferent locations and their mutual neutralization is reduced. Afterpost-ionization, ions are directed to the corresponding planes ofmobility tubes by increasing DC-field in vertical direction. Once ionsare transported into the mobility tubes, both analyses of ions aretaking place simultaneously (the analysis of direct ions may be startedsomewhat earlier) and another period of accumulation begins.

It seems at first that it is only necessary to measure positive ionscreated from neutrals since formation of negative ions during laserionization is expected usually only by subsequent secondary electronattachment reactions. However, direct formation of ion pairs can occur,especially for the case of biomolecules which may exist in a preformedstate within the sample in the form of zwitterions with equal number ofpositive and negative charges. Breaking bonds at different sites mayproduce such distinct positive and negative ion pairs giving valuablestructure information. The energy of about 2 eV may be sufficient tobreak a peptide bond which thus can, depending on the particularstructure of the zwitterion, create two separated ions of opposite sign.(Note, this can also be used to analyze the structure of ions where thenet sum of negative and positive ions on the molecule differ by one ormore charges). For direct ionization of organic molecule the energy ofabout 10 eV is necessary although this direct ionization by one or morephotons often is accompanied by significant molecular fragmentation. Asequence where initially the accumulation of neutrals along the axis ofhelium flow through the trapping region based on their size relateddiffusion coefficient within the gas flow may be important for analysisof ions subsequently produced from these neutrals. Two ions of oppositesign which come from the zwitterions of some type should be correlatedin the distributions for the ion beams (ideally should belong to thepair of corresponding ion beams) when simultaneously measured. Thiscriterion, besides the assumption that each positive ion from azwitterion should have the corresponding negative ion and sum of theirmasses should be equal to the mass of the zwitterion, may providevaluable information about the structure and sequence of thesezwitterions. This could be important since often this information isdifficult to obtain even when using CID or similar MS/MS techniques.Some difference in co-incident intensities of simultaneously producedions from the zwitterion is possible due to different efficiency of iontrapping for negative and positive ions. Also secondary processes whichfurther transform one or the other of the photofragment daughter ionsare possible as well. Usually biomolecular zwitterions in the sample ofnatural origin have a distribution of charges and are not a single typeof ions because they retain charges in different sites of thebiomolecule according to a stochastic processes. So if a pair ofpositive and negative ions is suspected to belong to a zwitterion it ishighly probable that positive and/or negative ions of the same mass(corrected for the number of attached or lost protons or, perhaps,alkali metals) would be recorded among ions coming directly from theMALDI target. Similar types of photo-fragmentation and coincidencebetween positive and negative structural fragments would also beexpected from fragmentation of either the positive or negative ions whensuch ions had one or the other charge in excess in a structure which wascharged at multiple locations. Thus if an ion which was for examplenominally singly charged but contained a total of two positively chargedsites and one negative, then the resulting fragmentation products couldbe either two “coincident” ions (one negative and one doubly chargedpositive), or one positive and one neutral fragment depending on whetherthe cleavage point was between the two positive charge locations orbetween the positive and negative charge location. Using four measuringunits (81, 85, 88 and 90) provides better conditions for accumulation ofneutrals around axis (83) because gas flows (89) from these units wouldforce these neutrals to the axis from all directions. Furthermore, inaddition to ions and neutral molecular species the MALDI plume cancontain droplets or some large associations of molecules and ions. Insuch cases when the size of such particles is fairly large (1 μm ormore), they cannot obtain significant velocity in the helium flow onsuch a short distance (about 2 cm). They may come to the right wall ofthe trapping region and can be accumulated there without evaporation ofthe solvent or significant degradation. Therefore it is reasonable toheat this wall to a temperature of about 100° C. or higher to evaporatethe solvent from these droplets and release the neutrals or ionscontained within. Ions and neutrals produced in such a way would betrapped in RF-traps or near the axis. It is probable in this case thations would be trapped in the last trap (at the right of the trappingregion) independently of their sizes. Detecting ions from this trap withand without wall heating would indicate the mechanism of droplet ionformation. It may also be reasonable to control the initial temperatureof the gas (helium) to produce a fast narrow gas flow. In this case thedivergence of the flow would not change much but the gas flow velocitywould increase as thermal energy of the gas in this flow is transformedalmost entirely into kinetic energy of axial motion of gas atoms.Droplets from MALDI target will be heated by the gas and may evaporatewithout freezing. This may produce additional ions and neutrals readyfor ionization and thus enhance the sensitivity of measurements. Theintensity and divergence of helium flow may be controlled by adjustingPflow and Ppump—FIG. 8—(changing effective pumping rate) as well.Therefore, the neutral and ion trapping abilities and the distributionsof trapped neutrals and ions along the axis can be varied. Switching offthe helium flow removes all neutrals from the trapping region.

A possible way of re-trapping and gradually inserting ions into amultichannel structure (which might be for example microchannel platesused as mobility tubes) is shown in FIG. 10. Upon increasing the inputDC-field (87) applied between collimated electrodes of both MCPs(97)—FIG. 9—ions come to the corresponding regions confined bycollimating electrodes under opposite forces from RF-field (103) and thegas flows (102). (FIG. 10) Strong DC-field (101) created betweencollimating electrodes and corresponding MCP moves ions to the surfaceof MCP in spaces (100) between the channels. The absence of the fieldinside the channels and the strong gas flows diverging from the channels(102) make ions “stationary” in the front plane of MCP. A dipole fieldfrom the pre-charged dielectric coating of the MCP plane and strongDC-field from collimating electrode (4) prevents ions from moving awayfrom near the MCP surface. Oscillations of ions under RF-field (103) aresmall and negligible. To insert ions inside the MCP, the acceleratingDC-field inside the MCP is gradually increased while a DC-field (101)between the collimating electrode and the MCP is decreased. Ions underincreasing influence of RF-field go from the surface (104) into MCPchannels under the force from fringing field from these channels andbegin to move inside them provided that the field inside the channel issufficiently strong. Alternatively it is possible to accumulate ionsbefore their insertion into the MCP (or other type of biasablemicrochannel array), directly in the regions confined by collimatingelectrodes. The external DC-field and RF-field are decreasing in theseregions in a direction orthogonal to the MCP plane and the gas flowdensity is approximately the same at distances not too close to the MCPplane. It is thus possible to choose fields in such way that ions maybecome stationary inside this region and their positions would depend onthe type of ions. To insert ions into MCP both DC-fields betweencollimating electrode and MCP and inside the MCP channels shouldincrease simultaneously to initiate the ion motion into channelsindependently of their slightly different gas flow density. In this casethe non-uniformity of fields may be the main limitation to the mobilityresolution (the spatial width of the ion package at the exit of MCP). Itis also obviously possible to use a single tube for each ion beamrecording instead of a set of MCP channels. In order to keep allexperimental conditions constant, the ratio of the tube diameter to itslength should be the same as that of MCP channels and the orifice areashould be equal to the total area of the MCP channels used for one ionbeam. An electric field of controlled and uniform strength should beproduced inside the tube. The plane in front of the tube and theconducting parts of internal surface of the tube should also be coatedwith a thin dielectric film not more than 1 μm and not less than 0.3 μmthick. It should be charged by the charges of the same sign as the ionswith a density between 10¹⁰-10¹² cm². Inevitable difference betweentubes for different ion beams could be numerically compensated based oncalibration experiments when the same sample is recorded using all ionbeams. As estimations show, the mobility resolution in this case isapproximately proportional to the square root of the time of theseparation, however, the separation time can not be taken too long dueto loses of the trapped ions provided by the diffusion of ions againstthe gas flow in mobility tubes. So for the mobility separation time ofseveral seconds the mobility resolution of a few hundred (for singlycharged ions) may be possible.

Helium flow (6) introduction and collision induced dissociation ofspecific ions can be performed in the set of CID tubes (FIG. 11). Exitorifices of mobility tubes (14) and entrance orifices of exit tubes (16)are open to this region to maintain the gas pressure near the orifices.Since all the channels for ion beams transport are supposed to workindependently, any variation of electric fields in these channels shouldbe done “locally”, or at least without changing the voltages at theentrance of the corresponding TOFMS. In order to perform CID of ions itis impossible just to accelerate them by increasing electric field in acertain portion of the corresponding CID tube (15). A reverse field todecelerate ions has to be applied, which will also tend to defocus oreven to stop them. The effective way to do that without ion losses is toapply such fields inside the tube whose internal surface is coated bycharged thin dielectric film. As mobility separation of ions against gasflows may be done slowly (mobility peak widths of several millisecondsor more) there is enough time for CID of specific ions without losingmobility separation. When no CID is performed, the electric field insideCID tubes (15) can be linear and strong enough to essentially transmitall ions coming out of the mobility tubes (14). A strong acceleratingfield is applied to realize CID at the beginning of the tube. The samestrength deceleration field is created at the end of the tube. Thelength of the strong field regions should be small enough to avoid theformation of a glow discharge (about 0.5 mm for 10 Torr helium). Uponswitching on these fields, ions with possible CID products will beaccumulated inside corresponding tubes and will come out in a shortpulse after the fields re-set. The delay time for the recording of theseions may represent additional analytical information about these ions.It is reasonable to synchronize the time at which ions are released withthe time at which TOFMS extracting pulses are applied to increase thedynamic range of data recording. Namely using different delays betweenthe time of ion release from CID tubes and TOFMS extracting pulses it ispossible to estimate the ion velocity of the fragments by comparison ofshifts in peak location using position sensitive detection in axialdirection. Using position sensitive detection for anodes shifted inorthogonal direction it is also possible for such conditions to estimateangular divergence of corresponding ion beams.

Multi-channel Exit Interface

The separated ion beams as shown in FIG. 12 are directed after CID tubesinto the exit sectioned tubes (16) with internal electric field ofapproximately the same strength as that inside the CID tubes. At the endof these tubes the helium flows (122) have a low divergence anglecorresponding to the gas temperature of about 1K. Ions coming with thisgas flow (120) are focused inside an RF multi-pole multi-channel ionguide. The rods of this guide (18) are supplied with RF-voltages of thesame phase and amplitude. Ions are focused to positions around thepoints of zero RF-field (123). The plates (17) between the rod pairsprovide focusing RF-field with the same phase as that of RF-voltageapplied to rods. Since ions were mobility separated before coming to theinterface, they have fairly low m/z values at the beginning of themeasurement cycle and roughly linearly increasing m/z values during thecycle (with different slope coefficients for different types of ions).It is therefore reasonable to increase the amplitude (or decrease thefrequency) of RF-voltage applied to rods proportionally to the squareroot of the time since the beginning of the measurement cycle with thecoefficient being the square root of the slope of the m/z versus drifttime to more nearly match the RF characteristics to exactly transportthe mobility selected ion size which happens to be in the RF coolingregion at that time. This RF-field variation would allow to record smallions without defocusing and losing them due to possible instability oftheir motion in a large amplitude (or low frequency) fixed RF-fields.

The RF field variation would also give an opportunity to effectivelyfocus large mass ions to the same beam width as smaller ones. This istrue for the singly charged ions; moreover multi-charged ions will befocused even better—proportionally to the charge. When the CID tubes areused to form CID products, it is important to point out the following.CID is usually used to obtain structural information about ions and themost valuable information is obtained from fragments with masses closeto that of the parent ion. Ions moving with gas having 1K temperatureand focusing in RF-ion guide come closer and closer to thermalequilibrium with the gas and their temperature becomes low. Since thewidth of an ion beam focused in a RF-ion guide is proportional to thesquare root of the ion temperature, the ion beam width may significantlydecrease. For example, ions having 3K temperature would have the finalbeam width 10 times smaller than that of ions at room temperature(˜300K). It is possible to obtain ion beams much less than 1 mm indiameter for room temperature RF-quadrupoles, the beam width of lowtemperature ions may be less than 0.1 mm. If input orifices in TOFMS(130) can be about 0.1 mm in diameter, low gas flow (122) will penetrateinside TOFMS and the desirable low gas pressure inside TOFMS may beprovided by using relatively modest pumping power.

oTOFMS Suitable for Multi-beam Ion Recording After Ion Cooling in theExit Interface

If ions coming from the exit interface (FIG. 12) have low divergence andthe velocity close to that of the helium flow (about 1400 m/sec at roomtemperature) it is not necessary to accelerate and focus themadditionally. Moreover, these attempts may spoil the desirableproperties of the parallel cooled ion beam due to inevitablenon-uniformity of electric fields. As shown in FIGS. 1 and 12 theregions from the end of the exit tube (16) throughout the regions for RFcooling (8), the region (127) containing differential pumping and ionmirrors (20,21) and finally into the oTOFMS. The same DC-voltage U1 isapplied throughout. From the end of exit tube (16), to the multi-poleion guide (17,18), to the mirrors (20,21) and the oTOFMS (124) itselfthere exists close to a zero-field region so as not to affect thetrajectories of the nearly perfectly cooled ion beam (132). Thus oncethe cooled ion beam is formed and reflected it is kept as undisturbed aspossible. It will be nearly parallel in the vertical plane (FIG. 12) butdivergent in the horizontal plane (FIG. 11). (The divergence in thehorizontal plane could also be corrected by using a perfect parabolicshape for mirror element (20) instead of the cylindrically parabolicwhich is illustrated).

The fact that the velocity distribution of ions is made equal to thevelocity of the He by the RF cooling in region 8 gives virtually thesame velocity to all ions over a wide mass range. This narrow, massindependent velocity distribution allows better use of the ionaccumulation time in the extracting region. The problem usuallyencountered in orthogonal TOFMS is that ions with medium to largermasses are detected with better efficiency than lower mass ions simplybecause the low mass ions (when compared to the slower velocity largeions) move quickly through the orthogonal extraction region and aremostly lost. Also, losses of really high masses falls off in partbecause these ions are moving so slowly that it takes a very long timeto fill the orthogonal plates and, therefore, a large fraction of theselarger masses do not have time to adequately fill the region between theorthogonal extraction plates and are lost at the front region of theextractor. On the other hand, a potential problem with the presentinvention is that because the flight time through the analyzer iscorrelated to the ion velocity in the initial direction of ion motion(in case of ion acceleration by electric field) the reflected ions withaxial velocity close to the drift velocity of the gas may partially orentirely miss a detector which is located coaxially with the extractorplates. To overcome this drawback it is possible to tilt the ion mirrorwith respect to the ion flow/extraction plates and place the detectorparallel to the extraction as it is suggested, for example, in the U.S.Pat. No. 6,683,299, K. Fuhrer et. al., 2004, incorporated by referenceas though fully described herein.

Another way to avoid missing the detector is to use a Linear TOFMS(right-bottom part of FIG. 12 and FIG. 13A.B) with orthogonal injectionof ions—LoTOFMS. In this case there is no problem with recording ions ofall masses. The cooling and focusing into very cold parallel beams asdescribed in our invention will result in acceptable mass resolvingpower in a very compact linear TOFMS instrument. The theoreticalestimations show that if ions (132) are accelerated by a uniformelectric field in the region (131) which is two times shorter than thefield-free region (130), they would have the same time of flight to thesurface plane of a micro-channel plate, MCP, detector (135) located atthe end of this drift region (130). In the first order of approximationfor zero initial velocity transverse to the beam direction (zeroturnaround time) ions of specific m/z would be perfectly time focused atthe MCP detector (135) surface. regardless of their starting positions.Below the detector MCP are shown multiple anodes (129) for positionsensitive detection and for detecting simultaneous multiple ion arrivalsat any particular m/z. If ion kinetic energy of random motion in thedirection of acceleration corresponds to the temperature, which is about1K, the mass resolution would be between 4000 and 5000 for 5 kVacceleration voltage (path length of ions may be about 20 cm or less).Using parabolic (or quasi-parabolic) mirror (20) made of conductorcoated by thin charged dielectric film the divergence of ion beam (132)may be significantly reduced further so it may be possible to recordhigh resolution time-of-flight mass spectra (more than 10000) with thiscompact linear instrument (about 20 cm long).

To decrease the “dead” time for inserting ions into the accelerationregion (131) of FIG. 13 a grid (133) may be used in the following way.At the beginning of ion acceleration voltages are applied to electrodes(126, 133, and 134) to create a uniform field between plates (126) and(134). The potential of grid (133) therefore should be equal to thepotential of the uniform acceleration field at this position. After theions with largest possible m/z go through grid (134) the potential of(133) and (126) is changed to that of the input orifice (121) (U1). Anew portion of the ions (132) may then penetrate inside the accelerationregion of the instrument. Zero field strength in the region (130) isalways necessary.

A grid free operation of the instrument (FIG. 13B) is also possible dueto relatively small width of the ion beam (132) in the plane orthogonalto ion acceleration direction (at least for a single beam LoTOFMS). Thenecessary electric field may be provided by corresponding potentialdifferences between frames (136) confining acceleration region insteadof by grids. Voltages applied to the frames may be found by the computerprogram to provide minimal average squared deviation of the actual fieldpotential distribution along the trajectory of ion acceleration from theideal expected distribution. In this case after filling the choseninterval with ions (132) the field inside the region (131) for ionacceleration should be switched on for the time necessary to pass theborder (112) of field (131) and field free (130) region for heaviest ionexpected in this package of ions and the next cycle of ion (132)accumulation could be started after the field switching out. It ispossible to form instead of “uniform” field in the region (131) and“zero” field in the region (130) a parabolic field in the whole volumeof LoTOFMS from the plate (126) to the recording plate (135). For idealparabolic field spacial ion focusing would be ideal instead of firstorder focusing for the previous piecewise-linear field. The necessaryvoltage distribution for the frames to approximate such field can befound by the program mentioned above used for constructing of apiecewise-linear field. Such field should be switched on for the timenecessary for the heaviest ion expected in the current package of ionsto be recorded and be switched out for the time of accumulation of ions(132).

Reduced pumping requirements for achieving high vacuum inside theLoTOFMS (124) is a further advantage of this arrangement shown in FIG.12. After reflecting the cooled ion beam (123) from the parabolic (20)and flat mirrors (21) the parallel ion beam (132) is shifted verticallyfrom its initial direction of motion but the gas flow (128) is randomlyreflected from the parabolic mirror and may be effectively pumped. Smalladditional pumping would provide high vacuum inside the TOFMS.

Measurement of Beam Divergence Using Multianode Data Recording

Ion beams coming into the TOFMS have the width of about 1 mm and theaverage divergence of about 0.01 radian. As simulations show, the axialenergy for large ions from such a gas flow is gradually increasing withtheir size and the beam divergence is decreasing. If the orthogonalextraction duty cycle of TOFMS is about 30 μsec then for a linear TOFMSions fill the extraction region for 15-25 μsec and then travel in theTOFMS for less than 30 μsec. If ions have an axial velocity of about1000 m/sec they will shift in this direction by about 5 cm and thestandard deviation of the ion beam width in the plane of recording (dueto ˜0.01 divergence) will be about 0.5 mm. If the distance between ionbeams is about 2 mm these beams will overlap to some extent at the endof recording plate. Thus if the detector has eight anodes and each oneis used to record an individual ion beam, it will record certain amountof signal from the adjacent beams too. This apparent drawback may beturned into an important advantage. A relatively small part of each ionbeam is recorded on adjacent anodes. We can use this to increase thedynamic range of measurements when the signal in the main channel issaturated. It is formally the same concept as that of using two anodesof large and small sizes to intercept different fractions of the ionflux on the detector (see our U.S. Pat. No. 6,747,271, Gonin, et al,2004). With good m/z and mobility separation and several adjacent anodesfor ion recording the problem can be solved in many cases.

Sometimes overlapping ion peaks may prevent precise measurement of theindividual intensities but this situation is quite common in massspectrometry and may be solved either completely or at least to someextent by deconvolution and curve fitting taking into account individualpeak shapes and isotopic distributions. The same mass ions coming fromdifferent channels under the same starting conditions may appear atdifferent times on the same anodes (due to mechanical inaccuracy, forexample) and the corresponding peaks may not overlap. The coefficientsfor recovering the saturated signal in the main channel may be obtainedby comparing the signals on anodes collecting the tails of mobilitypeaks (i.e. where the main signal is not saturated yet). Thesecoefficients for known location and sizes of recording anodes could beconverted easily into the angle divergence of ion beams if thevelocities of ions in axial direction are known. It is possible toobtain velocities by using signals from several (two or three) separateanodes. These anodes should divide the expected spread into equal parts.The signal from each part with the signals from adjacent channels wouldallow estimation of the average axial velocity of a given ion of as wellas its angular divergence or temperature. These two values (the axialvelocity and the temperature of ions for specific experimentalconditions) may provide additional information about ions which does notstrictly depend on their m/z ratio and mobility. Ion velocity would bemainly determined by the ion mass and its cross-section for collisionsbut this cross-section may be different from the mobility cross-section.Since ions move in a very cold gas, they will be significantly cooledand their conformation may change. They may become more compact and havea noticeably smaller cross-section compared to that at highertemperatures. It is possible to get some additional information aboutthe shape of these cooled ions by measuring their ion velocity andangular divergence using only eight anodes and recording eight ionbeams. The corresponding anodes should be located at a certain anglerelative to the direction of ion beams as shown in FIG. 14. In thiscase, the distribution of ion counts for each ion beam (140) over allanodes (as shown in FIG. 15 for the fifth ion beam) would be shiftedfrom its maximum position on the corresponding anode. The higher theaverage velocity is, the larger this shift would be. The distributionwidth will characterize the divergence of the ion beam. Since ionpropagation can be described by a simple function, it is possible to getquantitative estimations for both ion average velocity and the angulardivergence of the ion beams by fitting theoretically predicted data withexperimental ones.

In case angular divergences of ion beams on the detector are too low toprovide convenient increase of the dynamic range of the measurements itis possible to either provide more anodes and/or to produce anon-uniform focusing of the ion beams. Ion divergence in the directionof ion orthogonal extraction should be as small as possible to get highresolution whereas divergence in the orthogonal direction may besignificantly large. To obtain such focusing, the multi-channel RF-ionguide rods (18), as in shown at the top of FIG. 12, may be constructedto be closer in the vertical direction but at a larger distance inhorizontal direction. In this case, the profile of ion beams (123) willbecome stretched in the horizontal and flattened in the verticaldirection. Thus less ion cooling will be provided in the horizontaldirection while maximum cooling will be produced in the verticaldirection. Final parameters for the RF-ion guide should be found usingcomputer simulations. Another possible result of ion cooling, at leastfor biomolecular ions, is that in folding processes some helium atomsmay be caught inside the folded structure. Therefore, formation ofclusters with helium atoms is possible for certain conformations. Tosome extent, the degree of ion cooling in the gas flow may be varied bychanging the field strength inside the exit tubes. Ion beam divergence,their velocity at the end of RF-ion guide and the cluster distributionmay be changed to some extent by application of corresponding electricfields.

Recording of Elemental and Molecular Ions Using SIMS

FIG. 16 schematically shows a multi-channel TOFMS entrance interface forsecondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) measurements of elemental ormolecular ions liberated from a surface by impinging energetic primaryions (these including a wide variety of cluster and solvent droplet ionsknown to those skilled in the art). The liberated secondary ions haverelatively large energy spreads of several tens of electron volts.Positive ions (163) coming from the surface after the primary ion (164)impact, are accelerated by the potential -U towards to the input tube(169) of about 1 mm diameter against a gas flow coming from this tube,ions are focused into the tube by additional potential difference −ΔVapplied to adjacent two section electrodes at the exit of the tube. Aportion of neutrals formed under SIMS conditions can also enter thetube. To ionize the desorbed neutral elements, helium ions (162)produced in glow discharge (161) just before the entrance of the tubeare accumulated inside the tube up to a steady concentration. Thepotential difference at the exit of the tube −ΔV prevents them fromgoing out of the tube. The potential difference at the entrance of thetube +ΔV (which should be somewhat less than ΔV) controls theconcentration of accumulated helium ions. The internal surface of theelectrically conducting tube should be coated with a dielectric film toprevent loss of helium ions on the surface. Conducting material of thetube would generate image negative charges to ions inside the tube,which significantly compensates for the influence of the space charge.Thus a large amount of helium ions could be accumulated inside the tubeto provide ionization of practically each neutral particle entering thetube. Ions exit the input tube and enter an ion trapping region as theyhave sufficient energy to overcome the retarding potential of the firsttriad electrode of this region. Due to the retarding and lockingpotential differences applied to electrode triads (160), ions withenergies in a certain chosen intervals are trapped inside RF-quadrupoles(168) located between these triads with the exception of the last onewhich has only a pair of retarding electrodes (on the right side) (169).Alternatively, well established techniques for laser post-ionization ofsputtered neutral elements may be employed. FIG. 17 schematically showshow the ion kinetic energy in axial direction (170) changes when ionsare moving along the trapping region. There is only an exponentialdamping of ion kinetic energy in the intervals where the axial electricfield is absent. The energy is sharply decreasing when ions are movingbetween electrodes where retarding potential difference is applied (thefirst and the middle electrodes of triad electrodes (160)). The energyis increasing when ions, after overcoming a retarding potentialdifference, are moving in the field created by locking potentialdifference between the middle and the last electrodes of triadelectrodes (160). Due to some ion energy losses from collisions with gasatoms, ions could have somewhat reduced energy compared to the energythat they had before the retarding gap. Ions further lose their energyin gas collisions and come to the next retarding gap. They are reflectedback and trapped (171) inside the corresponding RF-quadrupoles (168) incase where their kinetic energy is insufficient to overcome the lockingpotential difference at the beginning of this RF-quadrupole. Theretarding potential difference at the end of each RF-quadrupole andlocking potential difference at its beginning should be close enough totrap ions. The difference between them preferably should not besignificantly higher than the ion energy loss from collisions with gasatoms on their way back in RF-quadrupole after reflection from theretarding potential. Otherwise ions could come back from RF-quadrupoleto the beginning of the trapping region and information about theirenergy will be lost (although the energy distribution of the secondaryions is seldom used analytically). It is probable that some ions fromthe target and some ions produced from neutrals will not be able toenter the trapping region due to lack of initial energy. They will betrapped inside the input tube and can be analyzed separately if primaryion bombardment and glow discharge are stopped, and if potentialdifferences along the input tube pull them out of this tube. Helium ionsalso coming from the tube will not be trapped inside RF-quadrupoles(168) due to their low m/z value and will be preferentially dischargedon the rods of the first RF-quadrupole. Trapping of the “remaining” ionsin several RF-quadrupoles will be useful to obtain large dynamic rangedata. Some estimation of collision cross-section of the recordedparticles will be also measured in this case, which would allow toreconstruct initial energy distribution of ions previously recorded. Byswitching out of RF-voltages in quadrupoles (168) and switching on thecorresponding DC voltages between their rods, adjacent electrodes oftriads (160) and permanent strong axial field inside sectioned tubes(16) accumulated ions are inserted (158) into these tubes. As before thetubes (16) produce supersonic gas flows (122) which move ions throughmulti-beam RF ion guide formed by RF-rods (18) and confining plates (17)with zero or constant voltage. After this ion guide well collimated andlow divergent ion beams (123) are inserted into multi-channel TOFMS.

Recording of Ions and Neutrals From Spray Ion Sources (Electro, Pneumo,Laser)

FIG. 18 shows schematically the first part of the proposed entranceinterface for multi-channel mobility TOFMS using electrospray,pneumo-spray, or laserspray ion sources. Typically, the formation of theflow of droplets (182) from the input capillary (183) is provided mainlyby the nebulizer gas flow (184). To overcome the main drawback of suchtype of droplet formation, i.e. the fact that droplets carry no charge,one may apply sound frequency voltage (185) as shown in the figure. Ifthe frequency of this voltage is chosen to be close to theeigenfrequency of droplets' oscillations it will be possible to splitspecific sized droplets into pairs. One droplet in each such pair willhave some excess of positive charge whereas the other one will benegatively charged. Thus the conventional mechanism of dropletevaporation and further splitting proposed for a typical electrosprayion source can be initiated on demand. Further evaporation of thesolvent from these droplets is stimulated by heating of these dropletsby microwave influence (180) and hot gas flow (181). Hot gas is insertedfrom two opposite directions orthogonal to the flow of droplets. Amicrowave electric field may be applied in these directions as well.Microwave heating of droplets has significant advantages in comparisonto conventional use of hot gas flow. As the transfer of energy from hotgas to droplets is proportional to the droplet surface, it is lesseffective for evaporation of large droplets. In contrast, microwaveenergy flow to the droplet for small droplets is proportional to thevolume of the droplet. So it has nearly the same efficiency forevaporation of each droplet. This energy flow is easily controlled,takes less power and does not significantly heat other parts of thesystem, for which heating is not desirable. In the plane orthogonal tothe direction of hot gas insertion, ions and charged droplets ofopposite signs are moved by increasing electric field (186) intocapillaries which accept a certain number of gas flows (eight are shownin the figure) with positive and negative charged particles. Increasingelectric field between opposite capillaries results in collectingdifferent fractions of the charged particles into these capillaries. Lowvolume-to-charge ratio particles will come inside the left (as shown inthe figure) capillaries and the particles with larger volume-to-chargeratio will be directed into capillaries on the right. Large dropletswith small charge and neutral droplets which were not caught by any ofcapillaries will come with the remaining flow (188) through a changeableexternal slit (187). This changeable slit would allow controlling theportion of the gas flow directed into capillaries. The capillaries canbe made out of sections of insulator plates coated by thin metal film sothat voltages applied between these sections would provide good focusingof charged particles inside these capillaries close to their axes andtheir heating by collisions with gas. Neutral species attached to theions may be removed in controlled fashion from these complexes and willcome into the trapping region with gas flow as shown in FIG. 20 (forpositive ions). The same trapping region is supposed to be used fornegative ions with inverted DC-fields. This part of entrance interfacefor multi-channel mobility TOFMS is very similar to that proposed forthe MALDI ion source. The main difference is that one TOFMS is absent inthis case. Instead of supplying TOFMS with corresponding ions the flowof ions and neutrals from the electrospray ion source is coming insidethis trapping region. The cross section of this trapping region for thiscase is shown in FIG. 21. Analysis of neutrals attached to ionsseparately for positive and negative ions may be useful as theseneutrals may be different for different type of ions and investigationof so called non-covalent complexes of biomolecules and ions relevant tosome applications may be realized.

Recording of Ions and Neutrals From Atmospheric Pressure Ionization IonSource

Almost the same entrance interface may be proposed for an atmosphericpressure ionization source for direct analysis of admixtures in ambientair. FIG. 19 shows the first part of this interface. A bipolar coronadischarge (195) can be used (other sources may be used too, for example,a radioactive foil) to produce ions (192) from neutral admixtures comingthrough capillary (193) with air flow (194). Flow of hot dry gas (181),for example, nitrogen, will prevent formation of large cluster ions.Admixtures having less proton affinity than H2O molecule or electronaffinity less than OH radical can not be formed as separate ions insignificant amounts but they may be attached to other ions. Therefore,investigation of neutral species attached to ions may be important forsome applications. As in the case of electrospray ion source, ionscombined with the gas flow through the tube (190) are coming into theseparation region where under the influence of increasing electricfields (186) they are inserted into the corresponding capillaries. Thegas flow containing neutral and low charged large particles (188) iscoming through the exit slit (187). The same second part of the entranceinterface, which is used for the electrospray ion source shown in FIG.20 and in FIG. 21, may be used for atmospheric pressure ionizationsource as well. Since the formation of ion pairs is possible for someneutral species in air, the analysis of ions of both signs produced fromthese neutrals may be important. For specific applications thisinterface can be simpler, when analysis of neutrals or when analysis ofions of a certain sign are not required.

The details in the FIG. 20 and FIG. 21 (partly coinciding with FIGS. 1,7, 8, 9 and 10) are as follows: (4) are the collimating electrodes forcollecting ions into corresponding traps and mobility tubes. (86) arelaser beams for post-ionization of neutrals. (66) is the well-collimatedgas flow for trapping neutrals along the axis of trapping region. (2)are the ions trapped by increasing RF-voltage with alternating phasesapplied to stripes (60). (1) is the trapping region where gas pressureof about 0.1 Torr is maintained. (90) is negative ion flow afterpost-ionization of neutrals by laser beam (86). FIG. 21 is an A-Across-section of the setup in FIG. 20. (80) are the field lines ofRF-field providing trapping of ions. (212) is the flow of positive ionsand attached neutrals from electrospray or API ion source. (83) areneutrals accumulated along axis of the trapping region. (84) arepositive ions from the source in the trap shifted to the right from axisby DC electric field (87). (85) are positive ions' flow afterpost-ionization of neutrals. (88) are positive ions' flow afteraccumulation them from ion source in the trap (84). (89) are gas flowsfrom mobility tubes and capillary from the ion source.

Although the present invention and its advantages have been described indetail, it should be understood that various changes, substitutions andalterations can be made herein without departing from the spirit andscope of the invention as defined by the appended claims. Moreover, thescope of the present application is not intended to be limited to theparticular embodiments of the process, machine, manufacture, compositionof matter, means, methods and steps described in the specification. Asone of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate from thedisclosure of the present invention, processes, machines, manufacture,compositions of matter, means, methods, or steps, presently existing orlater to be developed that perform substantially the same function orachieve substantially the same result as the corresponding embodimentsdescribed herein may be utilized according to the present invention.Accordingly, the appended claims are intended to include within theirscope such processes, machines, manufacture, compositions of matter,means, methods, or steps.

1. An apparatus for analyzing a flow of gaseous ions or mixture ofgaseous ions and gaseous neutral species, said apparatus comprising: anion mobility assembly comprising: an ion trapping region comprising aplurality of ion traps to receive said flow of gaseous ions or mixtureof gaseous ions and gaseous neutral species; a plurality of parallelmobility tubes, each of said mobility tubes fluidly coupled to said iontrapping region; optionally, a plurality of parallel CID tubes, each ofsaid CID tubes fluidly coupled to at least one of said mobility tubes;optionally, a plurality of parallel exit tubes, each of said exit tubescomprising at least one electrode and being fluidly coupled to at leastone of said CID tubes or to at least one of said mobility tubes; and, atleast one multi-channel RF ion guide fluidly coupled to at least one ofsaid exit tubes, at least one of said CID tubes, or at least one of saidmobility tubes; said ion mobility assembly having a separation axis in afirst direction; and, at least one TOFMS fluidly coupled to said ionmobility assembly, said TOFMS comprising a position sensitive detector.2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said ion trapping region isoperable under a pressure of about 0.1 to about 10 Torr.
 3. Theapparatus of claim 1, wherein said plurality of ion traps comprises areleast one RF ion trap.
 4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein saidplurality of ion traps comprises at least one DC field trap.
 5. Theapparatus of claim 1, further comprising voltage grids between said iontraps and mobility tubes.
 6. The apparatus of claim 1, furthercomprising at least one collimating electrode between said ion traps andmobility tubes.
 7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said mobility tubescomprise a front element operable at variable voltage biases.
 8. Theapparatus of claim 1, wherein said front element comprises a discretesection of capillaries, a microchannel plate section, or a combinationthereof.
 9. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein one or more of saidmobility tubes and/or CID tubes comprises a surface which is at leastpartially coated with a thin dielectric film.
 10. The apparatus of claim1 wherein at least one of said multi-channel RF ion guides comprisesmultiple pairs of rods and confining plates.
 11. The apparatus of claim1, further comprising at least one ion mirror between said at least onemulti-channel RF ion guide and said at least one TOFMS.
 12. Theapparatus of claim 11, wherein said at least one ion mirror comprises aconductor coated by a dielectric film.
 13. The apparatus of claim 12,wherein said at least one ion mirror comprises: a parabolic mirror, acylindrical parabolic mirror, or a quasi-parabolic mirror; and, a flatmirror.
 14. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein said ion mirror comprisesa surface that is charged.
 15. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein theion mirrors comprise thin metallic strips, said strips being alternatelybiased by positive and negative voltages, said voltages being RFvoltages or DC voltages.
 16. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein said ionmirror comprises electrode strips on a piezoelectric film surface. 17.The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a high pressure/high vacuuminterface positioned between said ion mobility assembly and said atleast one TOFMS; and, an ion interface assembly located at said highpressure/high vacuum interface.
 18. The apparatus of claim 17, whereinsaid ion interface assembly comprises an entry electrode, one or morefocusing electrode assemblies, at least one ion mirror with a dielectriccoating, a sectioned tube coated with a dielectric film, and afield-free tube coated with a dielectric film and having a largerdiameter than said sectioned tube.
 19. The apparatus of claim 1, whereinsaid TOFMS comprises a multi-channel detector.
 20. The apparatus ofclaim 1, wherein said TOFMS is an oTOFMS.
 21. The apparatus of claim 1,wherein said TOFMS is a LoTOFMS.
 22. The apparatus of claim 1, whereinsaid TOFMS is a gridless LoTOFMS.
 23. The apparatus of claim 1, whereinsaid ion mobility assembly comprises more than one ion mobility assemblyand wherein one or more pairs of said more than one ion mobilityassembly are opposed pairs.
 24. The apparatus of claim 1, furthercomprising repeller electrodes divided into strips, said repellerelectrodes located between said ion traps and said mobility tubes. 25.The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising an orthogonal collectionregion.
 26. The apparatus of claim 25, wherein said orthogonalcollection region comprises one or more voltage grids.
 27. The apparatusof claim 1, further comprising a source for the generation of said flowof gaseous ions or mixture of gaseous ions and gaseous neutral species,said source being fluidly coupled to said ion mobility assembly, andsaid source being configured to generate said flow in a direction thatis orthogonal to said first direction.
 28. The apparatus of claim 27,wherein said source further comprises means for post-ionization of saidgaseous ions or mixture of gaseous ions and gaseous neutral species. 29.The apparatus of claim 27, wherein said source is selected from thegroup consisting of a laser desorption source, a cluster bombardmentsource, a secondary ion source, an electrospray ionization source,photoionization source, a pneumo-spray source, an atmospheric pressureionization source, and any combination thereof.
 30. The apparatus ofclaim 29, wherein said source is a laser desorption source and saidlaser desorption source is a matrix assisted laser desorption ionizationsource.
 31. The apparatus of claim 29, wherein said source is asecondary ion source.
 32. The apparatus of claim 31, further comprisingan electrically conducting input tube having an entrance region and anexit region, said entrance region fluidly coupled to said source andsaid exit region fluidly coupled to said ion trapping region.
 33. Theapparatus of claim 32, wherein said electrically conducting input tubehas an internal surface comprising a dielectric film coating.
 34. Theapparatus of claim 32, wherein said ion trapping region comprises aplurality of electrode triads and a plurality of RF quadrupoles.
 35. Theapparatus of claim 31, further comprising a laser source positioned toprovide laser radiation to said ion trapping region.
 36. A method ofanalyzing a sample comprising the steps of: creating a flow of gaseousions or mixture of gaseous ions and gaseous neutral species from saidsample, said flow having an axis of flow in a first direction; injectingsaid flow into an ion mobility assembly, said ion mobility assemblycomprising: an ion trapping region comprising a plurality of ion trapsto receive said flow; a plurality of parallel mobility tubes, each ofsaid mobility tubes fluidly coupled to at least one of said ion traps;optionally, a plurality of parallel CID tubes, each of said CID tubesfluidly coupled to at least one of said mobility tubes; optionally, aplurality of parallel exit tubes, each of said exit tubes comprising atleast one electrode and being fluidly coupled to at least one of saidCID tubes or to at least one of said mobility tubes; and, at least onemulti-channel RF ion guide fluidly coupled to at least one of saidparallel exit tubes, at least one of said CID tubes, or at least one ofsaid mobility tubes; said ion mobility assembly having a separation axisthat is orthogonal to said first direction; and, thereafter injectingsaid flow into at least one TOFMS fluidly coupled to said ion mobilityassembly, said TOFMS comprising a position sensitive detector.
 37. Themethod of claim 36, wherein said step of creating comprises the step ofapplying a collimated stream of gas to said flow.
 38. The method ofclaim 36, further comprising the step of maintaining a pressure of about0.1 to about 10 Torr in said ion trapping region.
 39. The method ofclaim 36, further comprising the step of applying a DC electric field tosaid ion trapping region.
 40. The method of claim 36, further comprisingthe step of applying an RF voltage to said ion trapping region.
 41. Themethod of claim 40, wherein said step of creating further comprises thestep of applying an RF voltage to said flow before injection into saidion mobility assembly, wherein said RF voltage applied to said flowbefore injection into said ion mobility assembly is shifted by π/2 withrespect to the RF voltage applied to said flow in said ion trappingregion.
 42. The method of claim 36, further comprising the step ofcooling said flow before said step of injecting said flow through saidat least one TOFMS.
 43. The method of claim 42, wherein said step ofcooling comprises cooling with supersonic gas flows.
 44. The method ofclaim 36, wherein said step of creating comprises extracting andionizing gaseous neutral species from a gaseous sample plume.
 45. Themethod of claim 44, wherein said step of extracting comprises passing acollimated stream of gas through said gaseous sample plume.
 46. Themethod of claim 44, wherein said step of ionizing comprises ionizingwith laser radiation.
 47. The method of claim 44, wherein said step ofionizing comprises fragmentation of neutral zwitterions.
 48. The methodof claim 36, wherein one or more of said plurality of parallel mobilitytubes comprise a front element and said method further comprises thestep of applying a constant or variable voltage bias to said frontelement.
 49. The method of claim 36, wherein said at least onemulti-channel RF ion guide comprises one or more multi-pole RF ionguides.
 50. The method of claim 49, wherein said multi-pole RF ionguides comprises two or more rods and said method further comprises thestep of applying a voltage of varying phase and amplitude to said rods.51. The method of claim 36, wherein said step of creating said flowcomprises creating droplets with a component selected from the groupconsisting of an electrospray source, a pneumo-spray source, anatmospheric pressure ionization source, and any combination thereof. 52.The method of claim 51, further comprising the step of splitting saiddroplets into positively and negatively charged droplets by aquasi-resonant sound frequency field or an ultrasound frequency electricfield.
 53. The method of claim 51, further comprising the step of dryingsaid droplets by ambient gas heating, microwave absorption, or acombination thereof.
 54. The method of claim 51, further comprising thestep of applying an electric field to said droplets.
 55. The method ofclaim 36, wherein said step of creating said flow comprises creatingsaid flow with a component selected from the group consisting of a laserdesorption source, a cluster bombardment source, a secondary ion source,an electrospray ionization source, photoionization source, and anycombination thereof.
 56. The method of claim 36, wherein said methodfurther comprises passing said flow through a differentially pumped lowpressure region between said ion mobility assembly and said TOFMS. 57.The method of claim 36, wherein said step of injecting said flow throughan ion mobility assembly comprises injecting said flow through more thanone ion mobility assembly and wherein one or more pairs of said morethan one ion mobility assembly are opposed pairs.
 58. The method ofclaim 36, wherein said step of injecting said flow into at least oneTOFMS comprises injecting said flow into at least one TOFMS comprising amulti-channel detector.
 59. The method of claim 36, wherein said step ofinjecting said flow into at least one TOFMS comprises injecting saidflow into at least one oTOFMS.
 60. The method of claim 36, said step ofinjecting said flow into at least one TOFMS comprises injecting saidbeams into at least one LoTOFMS.
 61. The method of claim 60, whereinstep of injecting said flow into at least one LoTOFMS comprisesinjecting said beams into at least one gridless LoTOFMS.
 62. The methodof claim 36, wherein said step of creating comprises creating with asecondary ion source.
 63. The method of claim 62, further comprising thestep of passing said flow through an electrically conducting input tubehaving an entrance region and an exit region prior to said step ofinjecting said beams through said ion mobility assembly.
 64. The methodof claim 36, wherein said ion trapping region comprises a plurality ofelectrode triads and a plurality of RF quadrupoles.
 65. The method ofclaim 36, further comprising the step of post-ionizing neutral speciesin said ion trapping region with laser radiation.